An Eclipse Between Now & Never
An Eclipse Between Now & Never
September 29 - October 6 / Nightmares & Morning Pages
9/29: Dog-Ear: September 25-29, 2024, free to read for now
✺
10/1: October webbed & winged. I write again, not of forever but of a sturdy Now. My city gone crimson. My time tenuous as silk and how I love it from the frustrated depths of me. I can be anything, anything, and will never escape myself. Linger in the doorway of lifetimes waiting to be surprised.
Open things are so easily changed. The Future’s forehead slapped and stamped w/ OK. I leave a trail of red and black everywhere I go and I go, I go, as the guitar rips, I go. As the glasses clink, I go. As the cars smash, I go. The cars left in broken pieces in the broken street and I shiver, feeling like myself again, myself again, evil again as never before - open and in love - angelic again, the washed face of sin. A leg of Free St. is closed off today, blocked off for carnage. Smashed glass and busted bumpers. I’ve smashed a windshield, I know how difficult they are to shatter.
The demolition derby was in town, right in the arena at the crossroads. Here lies the Hyundais & Hondas at the crumpled, crinkled end of their lives. Machines meant to last forever and now, falling into the dirt, contaminating the soil for the rest of us. Bloody metal thing & entire cities disappearing, blowing up or washed away w/ the floods. I am thinking about the end of things. My city sits peeking idyllic against the shore, comparatively untouched, and I feel insane for that. I sit w/ my friends in a bar and feel sensitive about it. I’ve got somewhere to be in an hour.
This genderless snake twitches to life again, ecstasy. Crossing streets I never knew existed. I think, if I travel, it will all unfold just for me. But this strange New England longitude still has secrets to tell me. Invitations, every one. A feather and smashed glass, today’s date, lazy synchronicities that feel okay to accept. If nothing else, I’m having fun with it.
✺
10/2: I’m complete like any other motherfucker. I sit in a row w/ my family like a bat raised by birds, raised eating grasshoppers instead of fruit, a night thing woken in the harsh morning. I trip into daylight and fly too low. Tonight, an eclipse between Now & never. This morning, worn down by the ways I’ve failed Time, or the ways we have failed each other. Silver on the water that never freezes and I say, I’m like you too. Never still, flowing through the cold. I see myself crashing on the shores of my ancestry, wearing away the hard outer layers. I watch the moon turn slippery in salt water and feel my mother’s hand on my leg.
Pick off the dying bits, eat the dead skin, know when Hell sings over the mountains that it sings to me first, all sensitive.
Good, I am good, my face in lover’s hands, in a friend’s comforting chest, over my mother’s shoulder and echoed through us all. Hair sprayed brunettes saying Goodbye again. The shadow of doubt is dark and looms when I get too close to myself. Red says she’s seen it, this shadow, says she has seen me shrink before it. I pacify it like a child, eternal and pouting, this part of me no one knows how to coo to sweetness. Misunderstood is the easy way to put it, generous even, what stirs and eats in the spaces between love, where I have gotten used to being denied and divided.
The moon’s laughter is infectious. The ride home w/ shadow as passenger. I will catch up to myself by morning.
✺
10/3: Holding onto August made me lose September. I’m thinking it’s for the best, like I’m thinking about everything that way. I let go w/ fingers crossed. October, now, coming in whispers through a synthesizer. I watch the world die on time, going orange, going brown. The party dies w/ a lion yawn, bloody teeth & sleepy. On time for the apples to dream of dropping. On time for me to watch it in the short hours between dreams and dead ends. On time for the first time since my youth in the woods, a wash of color across the mountains.
Thank you to this body, alive while the world dies, to aching skeleton and blood that rushes, to my heart daring to be bigger, bolder, redder. While the light is still green, I go, get going, go, alive in a world looking over the edge of itself, beautiful while distracted, beautiful while dying, home no matter what.
Melodrama in the deep dark mid-afternoon. Window plays mirror and puts on a show. Our coffee mugs left out from the morning and our hands working the dough, unreal reflections and strength building folds. We give each other an hour to get home, an hour to be home, an hour to believe home. In the kitchen window, I spy. I glimpse this life from the outside without fear. In the mirror, I look past my reflection into the trees, where it feels more like me.
I pry want and need apart, or try to. They stick and stretch like a young poolish and growing. Burroughs moans it's full of holes, it's full of holes.
This walking unholy need is now standing, unfinished & unmet, in the kitchen. Wind whistles through the holes. I listen for the flies to tell me where the rotting is. Sweet like earth yet no soil to sink into. I do not make eye contact, but there is still mourning. We all understand how cracks work. When I invite an ending, it will be with all the love in my body.
✺
10/4: Dog-Ear: Oct. 4, 2024, pay to read
✺
10/5: Candles lit today, no fog to clear. Life creeping out now from where it tends to hide & fear, fear returning to the ghosts who left it in us. I hang onto myself like moss on trees, like tumbleweeds of Time wrapped up in the web. I lean into interlocked fingers, under my feet and behind my head and around my waist. I send my voice low and solid into the ground & read from there. It’s Saturday and you can see me now. Pointed toes on concrete, the mess of me. Sweat in direct sunlight, I park on the first free street this side on Congress St. and walk east.
The Art Book Fair is in town and I am more fearless this year. Sex and cinnamon in the morning and candles lit. I am making the meaning now or I am scrounging it, mining it, digging it, digging it up, stealing it from the black and blue sky, from the holes in our pockets, from the lies our world tells us of power, of purpose, of control. The only way I can combat this world of fear is w/ honesty and openness, w/ soft pants and leather shoes and people who help hold me up, branch to branch, corner to corner, shadow to light. In a dream, the key was in my pocket.
Last night, I had a conversation w/ the dart board. I said, You’re something of a web yourself. High at the sports bar, pattern mixing and looking for my boy. Each throw was chaotic, aimless, off the board but two bullseyes.
The bullseye said, You’re thinking about me right now, aren’t you? And I slipped, shot clumsy. I walked tall w/ possibility and hit her w/out thinking, saying, Hey, I’ve never done that before. I thought of the spider again, poised in her web, stoic as a rock: knows attack. I thought of my mother again, holding her hoodie close and me closer: knows abandon. A little laugh from the disturbed soil of me, turned over and making room for something new.
Through headphones today, I called Em. She’s at her mom’s now, safe after evacuating Asheville. Said she got there a couple days ago. Said it wasn’t supposed to be that bad but then she saw mobile homes and 18-wheelers floating down the street, rivers of brown collapsing the highway, said it will take more than a year to repair them. Said she was lucky, water coming in under the door, rotting rotting, sitting water rotting. Rationed cash, rationed water, rattled and lucky and calling this the Future.
More and more, I am thinking about the time it takes to build and rebuild. Better is something we usually have to buy or invest in, demand or have patience for. W/ care, we hope. W/ care, we insist. We are watching so much fall apart. Insects in the wood. Power grabs. No one getting paid enough. I shake my head as the crow flies now, as the red candle burns, as the spider feasts. I fiddle some small magic w/ my silver. Chains breaking. Chains falling. A dart sharpened to a point and flying into carnival stripes. OK got me here. Aim will get me everywhere else. Flash, flash photography on all our dark corners & we will be free.
Thank you mother, for the open heart. Thank you friends, for a new language. Thank you lover for listening.
✺
10/6: Finding belief again in family / finding belief again in friends / sometimes I catch myself not believing in love. Pan plays his flute when he’s lonely and I swallow the airstream, whistle a different way. I never want to lose the music, never want to be so stiff that the wind knocks me down.
Pan plays his flute when he’s lonely and I light money on fire. This morning I woke up screaming, SUCK THE POISON OUT! Left hand instinct up to the sky! I was holding something before, carrying something, no idea where it went. Sometimes we panic to prove something. I dream of hip bones in the sun to calm myself down. I anticipate loneliness and get ahead of it. I bother all my friends. I bleed in a funny way.
Please consider donating to the Red Cross while they help get North Carolina back on its feet.
This entry is a part of my Nightmares & Morning Pages series, where I write every day and share the good stuff. Subscribe to keep up with me & share what you like (please).
My messages & chat are open for inspired journal prompts or anyone who wants to pick apart the world with me. Catch you on the next go around 𖦹
G